You Owe Me Restitution!
by JoBethMegAmy. my homegirls
Summary: "Did you know that one year ago to the day, I really, really, really wanted to kiss you, sitting exactly where we are now?" (slight AU with Jane & Maura in their late twenties. because.) ONESHOT


**A/N**: Okay, so I actually messed around with this a couple years back and thought I might as well post it here. Just some silly, out-of-season fluff. Hope you enjoy the oneshot :) **AU where they're in their early 20s, **if you missed it in the summary, btw. Still some formative stuff going on for both of them.

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><p>I have no idea what made me say it.<p>

Suddenly there I was, sharing the one thing I had been so determined to keep a secret for the rest of my life, if necessary. Jane was sitting beside me on the couch on Halloween, the lights were out, and we were watching _The Omen_. Everyone else from our party had peeled off because they were tired, they had kids to put to bed, had other adults _to _bed, or they had other parties to hit up before dawn. 2:00 a.m. left just me and Jane, half-talking, half-watching the third scary movie of the night. It was after my second glass of wine that I set it down on the coaster in front of me and casually said:

"Did you know that one year ago to the day, I really, really, really wanted to kiss you, sitting exactly where we are now?"

Jane, who only had about half a beer in her, did not acknowledge what I'd said right away. Oh heavens, she was beautiful. She had that kind of strong beauty that used to intimidate me when I got too close. But there was something about her, her smarts, her voice, her laugh, that drew me so closely to her that for just over a year now I'd been dying of want.

A year ago I had just come to work as a lab tech at Boston's police department and I'd been invited to the Division One Café baker Angela Rizzoli's house for a Halloween party. There was a contest going on in the neighborhood: a fifty-dollar certificate for the local music store to the house with the most jack-o-lanterns. Tommy, Angela's recently paroled youngest son, really wanted that prize, and everyone at the party had all agreed to come on the thirty-first to help him carve some more pumpkins.

Before that night I had met Jane only a few times, and to be honest I thought she seemed a bit rough-around-the-edges for me. She was working with vice at the time, and I got the general impression that she thought I was annoying. Too wordy, too weird. That night, though, was the first time we made real eye contact and—not to exaggerate—it changed my life.

I was pulling the insides out from a pumpkin (which Tommy had sliced the top from already) when I realized the hole had been cut far too small. My hand got stuck in the pumpkin, and I could only laugh at myself and hold it up for Tommy to see. Then I heard someone snickering nearby and my eyes landed on Jane, who was stooped over slightly but looking up at me. My initial reaction was to take offense until I realized she was laughing _with _me, not _at _me, a distinction I had only recently learned to discern. She was so serious most of the time that I was pretty sure it was the first instance I'd ever seen her smile. It was wide and showed off a beautiful set of teeth, with dimples that stretched her catlike grin from ear to ear. She tucked some dark brown hair behind her ear and held out her hand towards me.

"Hi, I'm Jane Rizzoli," she said. "I think we've met a couple of times before now, but…"

"Yeah," I said weakly, taken entirely by surprise at how quickly my heart had started beating. And suddenly the phrase "butterflies in the stomach" actually mad sense! "I'm Maura. Maura Isles." Instinctively I reached out my hand to shake hers, only to realize it was still stuck in the pumpkin. This was what Jane had been going for, and she laughed as she tried to help me pull the stupid thing off.

"Maura," she chuckled. "Nice to meet you, uh, formally."

Once that was all done, everyone settled down to watch a slasher movie. Jane had made a space for me next to her on the couch, which was probably unwise because while helping to examine the dead in a secure environment does not frighten me in the least, gory movies which bank on the element of surprise and loud music successfully manage to creep me out. Most of the time when I'm talked into watching a scary movie, I tend to grab whoever is sitting next to me. Since I hardly knew Jane, though, I definitely wasn't comfortable with this—nor was I comfortable with the idea of what I wanted to do, instead. I wanted to jump on her lap and then stay there, and put my arms around her neck and kiss her…

What?

Anyway from then on I was completely hooked on her and I have almost no idea why. I thought for sure I'd have gotten over her by now, but she still sent a very tangible, very real tremor through me every single time she caught my eye… which was becoming more and more frequently, since she had moved to homicide and came down to the morgue on a regular basis.

But it was only now, with some drinks in me and some creepy movie going on in the basement of her childhood home where we were alone, that I had suddenly decided to tell Jane all of this. She had a boyfriend, one she'd been seeing for two years. Despite knowing this and despite my obsessive need to remain quiet about my attraction, lest I scare her away from even wanting friendship with me, I had just told her how much I'd wanted to kiss her once. What I didn't say was that I'd wanted to a lot more since then, and did now, but I don't think I had to bring it up.

There was a long silence after my random statement, then Jane finally turned to look at me. The room was dark, but light coming off the TV was cast onto her face, which was serious as usual. Even though it was her smile I'd fallen in love with, good _Lord _did she look sexy when her eyebrows were contracted like that and her lips were in that small frown of concentration. Her dark brown eyes were boring into mine, but she stood up before I could launch my tipsy self at her. Probably just as well.

"I'm going to take Maura home, she's tired," she said, looking over me.

I glanced around and saw Tommy standing behind me; I wondered how long he'd been there, but he didn't seem to have overheard anything I'd said. He merely nodded at Jane, yawned, and waved goodbye.

Jane silently grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me up off the couch, and we walked to her car. Or, truck, rather—she drove the rusty old white pick-up truck on loan from her father while her car was in the shop. After making sure I clambered up into the truck all right, Jane got into the driver's seat and I was startled to a slightly more awakened state by the loudness with which she slammed her door. We were pulling out of the driveway; she put her hand behind the head of my seat and half-twisted around to look behind her. There was something strangely arousing to me about this pose that she held for as long as we were in the driveway, and then I noticed the bicep that was bulging a bit under the pressure she was exerting on the back of my seat.

"D'you know you really look sexy right now?" I muttered.

She snorted a laugh but didn't take her eyes off the road. "Yeah…sure."

"I'm sorry, I'm gonna be quiet now," I yawned.

A moment passed and I felt my eyes closing, but Jane said, "Maura. Don't fall asleep yet." Instantly I sat up a bit more in my seat, willing my eyes to stay open. I waited on pins and needles for her to say something else, but we drove for ten straight minutes without exchanging another word.

Fine. It would be up to me to break the ice. I could do that. I'd been practicing. "So! How're things going with you and uh, that guy… that guy you're going out with?" _Stupid ugly army jerk_.

"Casey?"

"Yeah."

"Dude, we broke up like five months ago."

(I'd never been called "dude" before.) "Whoa. What? When? What? Why?"

She chuckled at my drowsy interrogation, but the smile looked forced as finally she pulled the truck over. We were just outside a woodsy sort of area, pitch black in darkness, but a sea of stars spanned the sky above our heads. "Could you help me with some, uh, stuff in the back?" she asked. "I'd like to move it into the back seat, out of the, you know, the thing…"

I opened my door and got out, then went around and stepped up into the back of the truck. There were some random Halloween decorations her parents had never got around to putting up, and I handed these down to her. When I'd gotten the last box to her and she'd placed it behind the passenger seat of the car, she asked me if that was all. "Yeah, just a few blankets left, but do you want to keep them in here?"

"Yeah, I do," she murmured, and the next thing I knew she was climbing into the pick-up part of the truck next to me. We were shivering and it was freezing outside, and Jane threw the heaviest blanket over my legs, letting me pull it up as far as I wanted to.

"You want to know why Casey and I broke up? I couldn't do it anymore." Her voice cracked on the last word, and tears—two fat tears—rolled out of her eyes. It struck me then that I'd never seen her cry before, not ever. "I couldn't lie to him or myself anymore, Maura. You're not drunk, are you?"

"Uh…not really. I just had the one drink is all… why?"

Her lips were pursed together so tightly that I think only a crowbar might've been able to separate them. Or my tongue, that could also work. She opened her mouth on her own, though, speaking mostly through her teeth. "They say drunk words are sober thoughts and I guess I just wanted to know if you meant what you said. When you said you wanted to kiss me."

"I said I wanted to kiss you a year ago," I clarified.

Jane wasn't sad, she was afraid, I knew that's why she was crying. "Oh," she puffed out. "I guess I…um, I guess I…"

"Oh no, no," I said in as clear a voice as I could. "I will kiss you right now. Jane Rizzoli, so help me I will kiss you right n—"

She grabbed me. One hand was at the back my neck and the other on the small of my back and she yanked me towards her. Her lips were on mine and my body went numb from head to toe. Even if she hadn't been kissing me, even if she'd only been holding me with those beautifully muscular arms and latching on to me with those wonderfully strong hands I think I might have been satisfied; but the ferocity of her kiss was pure heaven, it had to be. The only words going through my head were _take me, take me_, and when she pulled away for just a second, I muttered them aloud.

"What?" she whispered.

"Nothing," I said back, my breathing as shallow and hard as if I'd just finished running five miles.

"Did I hurt you?" she asked worriedly, her lips still quivering from the crying she wasn't finished with.

My response was to nod, then shake my head to clear it, then say "No. Don't stop," and I pulled her back to me.

Though she was still trembling and I could still taste her salty tears sliding occasionally into my mouth, I was able to tell that Jane was finally smiling. This caused me to smile as well, and she let out a small, nervous laugh. I took the chance to slide my tongue into her mouth. For a moment she froze in my arms, but then she fell slowly into me, and I knew I had her. Her tongue circled mine as I rolled her onto her back; I pulled up a bit just to see if she would try to follow me, and she did—she pushed herself up onto her elbows, craning her neck to keep her lips on mine and I was so overwhelmed with complete and utter joy that I couldn't concentrate on what I was doing anymore.

In the brief moment I had taken to collect myself and think about how crazy it was that this fantasy I'd been carrying in my head for three hundred and sixty-five days was coming true, Jane sat up. "Have you done this before?" she asked in a shy voice, wrapping her arms around her knees.

"Uh…done what?"

She scowled at me. "You know…with a woman."

My heart rate had just been getting back to normal, but she spiked it right back up again with this remark. Immediately I dove into over-analyzing mode, intrigued by the fact that she hadn't said "kissed" or "made out with" or "been with." She'd omitted any sort of specific verb, leaving me with the presumption that she was asking if I'd ever had sex with a woman before …and that we might tonight… which I admit took me by surprise, as I had gotten the impression before that she was fairly conservative in that regard.

"I've never slept with a woman," I said hesitantly. "But I did make out with one once at a party. My freshman roommate and I lost a bet with some guys on our floor and we had to make out for them." I shrugged. "It was what it was. I didn't really feel the need to pursue it any further."

"I slept with Casey," Jane said. She took a shaky breath, and it came out with a self-conscious laugh. "I mean, obviously. But… really, only a few times. And I guess that makes sense, since he was away a lot of the time. Abroad. You know, in the… in the army. I kept thinking it would feel more natural, that I would start liking it as much as I was supposed to. But we didn't do it very much even when he was home because I think I must've been really, really terrible at faking it."

For a few moments I surveyed her, watching as she began to shiver again and avert her gaze from me. "He must have really cared about you," I said.

She shrugged. "Guess so."

"Did you tell him why you broke up?"

"I didn't have to. We both just knew we were better off as friends, not… you know, something more. But I didn't tell him I was like… you know."

All I could do was nod. A strange air of solemnity had come down on us, and I wanted very much for it to go away. I wanted her to laugh again and I wanted to kiss her again, but neither seemed very appropriate at the moment. After a few moments had passed, I just reached out and put my hand on her arm. She jumped- "What's that?" Still in the Halloween mindset.

"It's my hand, Jane. Give me yours."

Her shoulders fell slightly and she took my hand, bringing it to her face. For a minute or two she held it to her cheek and I held my breath. Finally that small smile came back to her.

"So a year ago on Halloween, huh?"

I scooted closer to her with a small laugh. "Yes, Jane, you really turned my head. I just remember feeling so overwhelmed with how smart you were, and how cute your smile was. You didn't smile enough."

Jane took my hand away from her face and held it more tightly in her own. "Oh, I remember. I remember that night, Maura. You were wearing a big blue sweater with a picture of Snoopy on it because our neighbor's kid had thrown up on your shirt, and it was all Ma had on hand for you. Or that's what she said, but I think it was so you could match _The Great Pumpkin_, which they hadgoing on in the background. And you were barefoot, but I have no idea why. Your hand got stuck in this teeny tiny pumpkin and for some reason I thought that was just really funny." She let out an embarrassed laugh. "I thought _you _were funny, and it was a side of you I hadn't ever really known before. I thought you were cute."

This perked me up a bit. "Cute?"

"Yeah, but not like I liked you or anything. I—I'd never have let myself really think anything like that."

"Oh. I'm pretty sure I fell for you right then, that night."

Normally I was never this open, and were it not for the drowsiness overtaking my senses I'd have been much more embarrassed about having just admitted that. There was also the strange comfort I felt in having Jane hold my hand in the back of that car, like she didn't want me to feel weird anymore. But then she let go of my hand, and for a brief moment I was terrified I might've said something wrong, but then she touched my forehead. Her fingers grazed my hairline, pushing away the bangs I was trying to grow back. She weaved her fingers through my hair and I shuddered involuntarily. With her other hand she stroked my cheek, my jaw line, my neck, and pulled me into a kiss. We moved at a more relaxed pace; she was tasting me, testing me out. I put my arms around her and gently lay her down onto her back again.

I felt as if my hands were moving of their own accord and I didn't have to stop to think about anything. I kissed Jane's perfect collar bone and moved slowly up her neck, eliciting faint moaning sounds as I did so. I cannot exaggerate how turned on I was by the sounds she was making; they had heightened in pitch as I moved upwards, balancing out into a satisfied moan as I gently teased her hair out of its ponytail. She slid her hands underneath my sweater, feeling my back.

She broke off with a small gasp. "You're not—you're not wearing a—a thing!"

"A condom?" I joked, highly amused that she had forgotten the word "bra."

For a moment she looked confused (perhaps because she's not accustomed to me joking around), but then her face split into that adorable smile I had fallen so hard for. I shifted myself slightly and wound up with one leg between hers, my knee brushing between her thighs for a moment. "Ooh," she inhaled. "Do that again." I did, and she dug her nails into my bare skin—slight pain had never made me feel more alive or more enthralled.

But before I could attempt to do anything more, Jane had suddenly rolled over on top of me, looking down at me with a devilish grin. I found myself wondering if she really had any comprehension at all of how aroused I was by her, how it was so much deeper than just a physical attraction. I'd had other crushes, sure, but I felt right then as if I would never love anything so much as I loved the feeling of Jane on top of me. Her hands had started pushing my sweater up, but this was where I rolled us over again and put myself back on top of her.

I liked taking her by surprise.

Her back arched as I felt my way up her shirt, stroking her tense abs and likely gasping audibly at how smooth and muscled they were. I reached her strapless bra, and my breath caught in my throat again at the thought of feeling her breasts. Jane whispered encouragement to me, swearing at me, telling me to keep going, and she felt so good and so right in my arms...We had entered that sweet intimate world where minds don't fully function, where language is made up of nothing but moans and whimpers and half-completed whispered words. The magic of this moment was broken slightly when Jane reached up to go underneath my shirt, and I sat up sharply.

"What is it?" she asked, sounding short of breath. (When did something like breathing become so sexy?)

But yeah! What is it?! Why am I stopping?! "I just, I don't...think...we should go much further right now. It'd be too much for you."

"Why don't you let _me _be the judge of that?"

"Well, and for me."

She considered this for a moment, and I could see her breathing becoming less shallow. I lay myself gently down next to her, resting my arm over her stomach to feel it rise and fall. Jane stared up at the stars, her face once again the perfect image of deep concentration. I'd have given anything to know what was going through her mind.

"Jane," I said. "I don't know if anything like this will ever happen between us again, but I feel like I really have to tell you how much I… I think I…"

"Don't say it," she interrupted me, sitting up suddenly. In a softer voice, she continued: "Maura you have no idea how wonderful it is to…to feel loved, to hear that someone loves you. And, I mean, to reciprocate it. Casey told me he loved me, but it was never a comfort to me because I knew I didn't feel the same way about him."

"But Jane, I think I love you," I heard myself saying in a hoarse voice.

Here was a facial expression that I was entirely unfamiliar with: it was a mix of surprise, disbelief, a frown, and a smile. I'm sure in a less tipsy frame of mind, I'd have been able to conjure up a more intelligent sounding query, but all I could think was _Why. Was she. So. Hot._

"You mean that?" she asked.

How could I convince her? "Yes, I do. I mean it, ever since that stupid Halloween party last year, I've just wanted to… I've wanted you."

"Okay, so now you've had me." (sort of.) "Now what?"

She sounded skeptical, and it broke my heart. "What do you mean, now what? I want to… I was, I mean, that was amazing. You're incredible, Jane. I want to get to know you better."

"Physically."

I bit my lip. "Sure. But as a person, too. I want to know you. I've always wanted to. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you feel the same way." She remained silent, staring at me, another frustratingly unreadable look on her lovely face. I rested my fingers on her arm, lightly tapping them downwards until Jane actually reached for my hand and laced our fingers together. She glanced up in time to see my resultant grin. Pressing my luck with another joke, I whisper-yelled in my best Sally Brown impression, "You owe me restitution!"

This brought the slowest smile yet to her face… a closed-mouth smile that only showed her teeth when I had put my arm around her and we sat side by side to watch the sun come up on November.


End file.
